Mr. T Explained

Donald Trump’s white America is revolting: New numbers show just how noxious the GOP front-runner’s coalition is
Exit poll data proves it: Trump is the candidate of voters who resent African-Americans and immigrants

Donald Trump wants more things for “us” and fewer things for “them.” .....

Exit poll results from the New Hampshire primary on Tuesday night showed deep discontent with the Republican Party

and the federal government, and the candidate who railed hardest on those topics, Donald Trump, won with multiple groups of voters. ....... Trump won 6-in-10 voters who said they were looking for an outside candidate. ..... Two-thirds said they support Trump’s proposal to temporarily ban Muslims from entering the country. He won 42 percent of their votes......Four in 10 supported deporting undocumented immigrants; Trump won 46 percent in this group........ measures resentment toward African Americans and immigrants with statements like “blacks could be just as well off as whites if they only tried harder” and “it bothers me when I come in contact with immigrants who speak little or no English.” ......... compares how favorably respondents rated whites to how favorably they rated minority groups. ..... Most striking is how each of these measures strongly correlates with support for Trump. The graph below shows that Trump performs best among Americans who express more resentment toward African Americans and immigrants and who tend to evaluate whites more favorably than minority groups. ....... statistical models show that each of these three attitudes about minorities contributes independently to Trump’s vote share. So much so, in fact, that GOP primary voters who score in the top 25 percent of their party on all three measures are 44 points more likely to support Donald Trump than those who score in the bottom 25 percent ........ he combines the nativism, racism, pro-big business attitude, wants more tax cuts for the wealthy, militaristic nationalism, and out-group animosity that typifies mainstream conservatism, with promises to expand healthcare, enact trade protectionism, fix the nation’s infrastructure, and improve the lives of the (white) working class. ........ Donald Trump’s particular version of right-wing populism is a direct threat to present day Republican orthodoxy. .......... right-wing producerism. ..... Producerism is a belief that society is divided between “makers” and “takers.” Right-wing producerism tries to mobilize “real citizens” against “evil” parasites on the “bottom” of society such as the poor, people of color, immigrants, gays and lesbians, “the lazy” and any other subordinate group that can be identified as the Other. ....... “producerism, with its baggage of prejudice, remains today the most common populist narrative on the right, and it facilitates the use of demonization and scapegoating as political tools.” ......... Trump is also channeling Herrenvolk ideology with his explicit promises to protect the white working and middle class from “those people” (be they supposedly rapine and violent immigrants; scheming Chinese; or nebulous brown Muslim terrorists in ISIS and al-Qaida) while also ensuring that there is a social welfare state, economic mobility and expanded healthcare for “real Americans.” .........

In a Herrenvolk society, the racial in-group is fully enfranchised while the racial out-group is marked as an “anti-citizen” that is not worthy of full democratic rights.

.......... the racial Other’s subordinate status is used as a marker for elevating the status and power for the dominant racial group. Centuries of chattel slavery and then Jim and Jane Crow were means through which white Americans defined the meaning, worth and boundaries of citizenship.

Historically and to the very recent present, American democracy and the exclusive white male franchise were not contradictions in a society organized around the Herrenvolk principle.

......... Citizenship and belonging are demarcated along racial lines in a Herrenvolk society; benefits, resources, rights and support from the state are allocated by the boundaries that separate “us” from “them.” ....... Donald Trump’s right-wing populism is a return to an understanding of the modern American welfare state that dominated from the end of the Civil War through to the Great Society. And while the American welfare state has certainly “evolved” in an era of neoliberalism, extreme wealth and income inequality, surveillance, punishment and austerity, there are a litany of programs that disproportionately benefit the white working, middle, upper classes, and rich as compared to non-whites. This, what is now termed the “submerged state,” is a de facto type of welfare for (white) America. As public policy, the submerged state is heavily protected as an “entitlement” while simultaneously being decoupled from the history of white privilege and white supremacy that birthed, and in some ways, continues to sustain it.

White voters are attracted to Donald Trump because they are afraid that the benefits of the submerged state will be taken away from them.

......... Trump’s supporters are largely composed of frustrated and alienated working-class white Americans who are embracing authoritarian values. ...... A white lower-educated supporter on the lower-income scale is not what we normally term middle-class: It’s more aptly called the working-class. ..... “Trump is the staunchest champion of the white working class that American politics has seen in decades.” .......

“authoritarian predispositions and ethnic prejudice flow more naturally from the situation of the lower classes than from that of middle and upper classes.” These were the people who formed the base of the Nazi labor unions, the White Citizen’s Councils in the segregated American south, and race rioters in England

......... “working-class groups have proved to be the most nationalistic and jingoistic sector of the population. In a number of nations, they have clearly been in the forefront of the struggle against equal rights for minority groups, and have sought to limit immigration or to impose racial standards in countries with open immigration.” This, of course, describes a Donald Trump rally almost perfectly… ......... rather than seeing most Trumpists as Middle American Radicals or even a uniquely American phenomenon, it is more accurate to see them as

the latest in a long line of working-class authoritarians—people with a very scary, very dishonorable past.

........ “Trumpmania” is a combination of the Know-Nothings, the Republican Southern Strategy and a type of right-wing populism that views people of color and non-white immigrants as toxins in the body politic. ...... Donald Trump promises to “Make America Great Again.” Trump cannot do this without excluding millions of Americans who are not white and Christian. In practice, Donald Trump’s right-wing populism will shrink the boundaries of political community. This will make for a less vibrant, rich and productive American society. While Trump promises health, strength and vitality for his voters, the reality is that working-class authoritarianism and right-wing populism are poisons to a modern cosmopolitan society.

Silicon Dhanush, Silicon Crescent

Silicon Crescent: Delhi - Ahmedabad - Mumbai - Bengaluru

Janakpur to Patna: 180 KM
Patna to Kolkata: 580 KM
Kolkata to Dhaka: 250 KM
Dhaka to Mandalay: 1100 KM
Mandalay to Kunming: 760 KM

2870 KM = 1780 miles

That's two and a half hours on a hyperloop.

The Janakpur to Dhaka stretch is barely 1000 km. That's an hour and a half on a hyperloop. That entire stretch could be one big city.

61st Filmfare Awards 2016

Bad News For Hillary In The South

English: New York City Mayor Mike Bloomberg with Spider-Man at Midtown Comics Downtown. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Iowa was pretty much a draw. This huge gulf that Bernie has drawn in New Hampshire is bad news for Hillary in the South. Times have changed. Bernie already pulled a giant sum of money in January. This month he might double that haul. That makes a huge difference.

Used to be, you waited to get to the South, and the South was that one place where you could go hugely negative on your opponent, and it would work. That is no longer true. The South itself has changed much. And it stays a national campaign.

Suddenly the Republican race feels much more competitive than the Democratic race.

And the winner is? Mike Bloomberg. The way the two races are shaping is making a lot of room for someone like the Mayor.

Idealism is back. Bernie is sweeping the young vote like Obama swept the black vote. After JFK-RFK-MLK, there were decades of cynicism. Looks like Barack Obama has managed to put idealism back into American politics. That is such a good thing. That is a reward in its own right. These are not young fools. These are smart, young people who do understand the political process. Precisely because they understand how things work, they are willing to take idealism up one notch. Because they feel that is how they can beat the system.

This race is shaping up to be pretty interesting.

US News (7)

Bloomberg: I'm considering 2016 bid

"I find the level of discourse and discussion distressingly banal and an outrage and an insult to the voters," Bloomberg told the Financial Times, adding that the public deserved "a lot better." ..... he was troubled by Donald Trump's success on the Republican side, and Hillary Clinton's inability to stanch Bernie Sanders' growth on the Democratic side. ..... Bloomberg would run as a moderate promising to bring compromise and business savvy to an election characterized by highly charged disputes and political partisanship....... Bloomberg is seen as a pragmatist and fiscal conservative who has taken liberal positions on issues like gun control and the environment...... With a $39 billion fortune, Bloomberg is expected to self-fund his campaign and would likely spend north of $1 billion to do it.

Donald Trump: 'I'd beat Bloomberg'

Donald Trump says he's unfazed by the prospect of running against Michael Bloomberg, the former New York City mayor who is considering a possible third party bid in 2016....... "I'd beat him," the Republican presidential frontrunner told CNN's Wolf Blitzer in an interview on Monday....... The braggadocious real estate magnate also appeared to goad Bloomberg. At one point, Trump cast doubt on Bloomberg's business success, suggesting that the head of the Bloomberg media empire wasn't actually worth the $36.5 billion estimated by Forbes. ...... "I don't believe it, I don't believe it," Trump said....... Trump said that the success of Bloomberg's company could easily be undermined if someone came up with a better machine than the Bloomberg Terminal, the costly financial data hardware that accounts for the bulk of Bloomberg's revenues. ...... Bloomberg, who has long been said to harbor presidential ambitions, has taken a more serious look at the 2016 race after concluding that

Trump's victory on the right and a Bernie Sanders victory on the left could leave moderate voters without an alternative.

Michael Bloomberg has no patience for your argument that he can’t win the presidency

It is funny to think of a presidential race featuring a guy from Manhattan, a guy from Queens and a guy from Brooklyn. Granted the Manhattan guy is Bloomberg who is actually from Boston, and granted the guy from Brooklyn lives in Vermont, and granted the guy from Queens now also lives in Manhattan -- but there's something perfect about the idea. Bernie Sanders's gruff Brooklyn socialism battles Donald Trump's appropriated Queens blue-collar roughness, facing off against the polished persona of Michael Bloomberg, the guy who wouldn't move into the New York City mayor's mansion -- a freestanding house in the middle of a beautiful park -- because he would rather stay in his expansive Upper East Side townhouse. ........... More than half of the people surveyed told Quinnipiac that they hadn't heard enough about Bloomberg to have an opinion of him, a pretty staggering number for a guy who 1) owns a magazine and 2) was mayor of the largest city in the country for 12 years. But still: People don't know him. So asking how this unknown person would fare against Bernie Sanders (who is still unknown to a fifth of Americans) and Donald Trump is a bit iffy. ....... Bloomberg's motivating principle is that he knows better than you. He knew better than the people he asked to watch over the Bloomberg media empire while he was mayor, cleaning house and upending the organization's newly created politics site. He knew better than the people who opposed his various efforts to fight obesity in New York City, including the infamous ban on large sodas (which is not in effect, FYI). He knew better than the term limits placed on mayors in the city of New York, convincing the city council to allow him to run for a third term despite those limits, a third term that he won by a surprisingly narrow margin. (Why'd the city council go for it? They got another term, too.) And Michael Bloomberg knows better than to think has no shot at winning the White House.

Mike Bloomberg: American public deserves "a lot better" in 2016 race
Donald Trump rolls out the expletives at Portsmouth rally

Another less literal screw-you of sorts: Trump took the stage to strains of Adele's," Rolling in the Deep." Earlier this week, the award-winning British pop star banned Trump from playing her music at his campaign events.

Star Screen Awards 2016

Six Fall Guys

1. A black guy.
2. A Hispanic.
3. An Indian. Two Indians, one a diplomat. 
4. A Chinese. 
5. A Sri Lankan. 
6. A Jewish guy. 

In the aftermath of the Great Recession I noticed there were six most visible fall guys. When democracy and the market are at their best, I believe that does not leave room for racism. Europeans have numerous schisms. But when those same Europeans gather in America, a white identity gets formed. Perhaps the Chinese identity is a similar melting pot identity formed over a few thousand years. It has always amazed me how a billion people can be a single ethnicity. 

When Wall Street wiped out 13 trillion in wealth, there were six fall guys, the most visible ones. 

Corruption in a city like New York where there is so much power and money concentrated in one small place is like speeding on the interstate highway. You can police it, you can get people to pay fines, but you can't perhaps eliminate it. You are essentially dealing with human nature. Greed has a tendency to creep in. 

One way to look at it is, after about 70 years banks accumulate so much in bad loans, those bad loans need to be wiped out, the slate needs to get clean. So it was not bad behavior. It was just the slate getting cleaned for a fresh start. 

But then there are other complaints. America built infrastructure in Europe, and then it stopped. Why stop? Why not go on to build infrastructure in Africa? Asia? Latin America? That was racism. A country choosing to destroy or park trillions while there is such unmet need in terms of infrastructure, credit, and clean energy is racism. 

The six fall guys point at that racism that impact billions of people. 

Also, there needs to be a less painful way to wipe out bad loans. An economy should be able to wipe out bad loans without bringing itself to the knees. Maybe this should be the last Great Recession.